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Writer/Director Chuck Parello, a Chicago native and graduate of the city's Columbia College, had been running director John McNaughton's development company for over three years when he was hired to write a sequel to McNaughton's chilling cult classic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer for a Chicago-based film company. The company was so impressed by Parello's tension-filled script for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2, which plunged the sociopathic main character into the dark world of arson for profit, that they also asked him to direct the piece. Shot during a frigid Chicago winter, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 earned kudos during its theatrical release from critics who said it was a genuinely creepy and entirely worthy follow-up to McNaughton's film. The production company Tartan Films was struck by Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 as well so they asked Parello to write and direct Ed Gein (2000). The delectably disquieting movie that ensued, winner of Best Picture and Best Actor at the Siges International Film Festival, chronicles the true-life exploits of an infamous momma's boy/killer (Ed Gein) from the 1950s whose grave robbing and other odd behaviors influenced such landmark films as Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. Ed Gein (2000) was such a huge success around the world that Parello was next asked to write and direct The Hillside Strangler for Tartan Films. Based on the true 1977-79 case that paralyzed all of Los Angeles with fear, the film portrays two cousins who went on a sex-crazed killing spree together. Parello is next scheduled to direct another hard-boiled, fact-based script he wrote named "City Gas," which concerns a ruthless, gangster-obsessed businessman who hires a career criminal to commit a string of contract murder for him over one long, hot summer.